


Knowing No More

by Boethiah



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Character Study, Depression, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, It's Evangelion, One Shot, Paranoia, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-14 02:15:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11773398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boethiah/pseuds/Boethiah
Summary: What does it take to say "I hate you" to yourself and to others?Asuka finds out.





	Knowing No More

Tsk tsk. What awful thing are you going to say next?

You sit in front of a mirror, legs crossed, hands on your knees. No singular, coherent thought arises, just a slurry of vague feelings and scattered impulses.

"I hate you." you say, not in a scream but a low, dripping snarl. "You're an idiot."

Unconvinced, you bare your teeth at yourself. It's a half-hearted attempt at best, and it drops into a frown right after.

Staring into a mirror is disquieting, beyond superficial admiration of your own beauty; it makes the memories slither out the back of your head and hiss into your ear. Your right hand balls into a fist.

Mirrors are fragile things, really - the reason most people don't break them is that they're afraid of getting their hands cut. Even an angry child could crack one and feel the glass shards dig into their knuckles.

Your stepmother panicked and feigned concern and your father played the horror-struck parent and you said it was an accident. It was easier that way. That way, things all got patched up before dinner and everyone got to pretend everything was normal.

_Why did monsters need to be real? Human beings are bad enough as it is._

The magma bubbles at your arm. A tooth slices your palm open. An unbearable pressure bears down on your hands and back, white-hot pain your entire world. Pain's your oldest friend.

And from that pain comes need. Gestating, raw need for – for what? Some nameless thing, something dancing around the edge of perception. It's like a hole's been torn in your heart and nothing you do is stopping the bleeding.

So you numb the pain; you numb it with bluster, with posturing, with words that sting like barbs and unwanted advances. That's all you've ever known since you were a girl, since you became a woman.

You _are_ a woman, after all.

Kaji can deny it all he wants, but you can see the longing in his eyes. You can tell all the twirling and grinding and stripping you do's gonna take its toll eventually. He'll give into your temptation. And then at the moment of surrender, you'll swallow him up.

Sex is a lot like eating, isn't it? It's fueled entirely by contempt for the person you're using. You don't see them as a person, just a vehicle for your own sick, twisted desires. It's an act of violence.

And it's precisely why you need to wield it as a weapon. Because if you don't, they'll do it to you; Kaji, those leering bastards at school, the Third Child, that little idiot...they'll swallow you if you don't - he'll swallow you if you don't -

Your mind's eye stretches open, welts of blood dripping from beneath the lid. There his hands are - big, strong hands on her breasts, palming and kneading and suckling with infantile glee. All the while, Mama's wasting away - body and mind rotting slowly on a bed. That heartless, callous, perverted fuck.

And then you're there, at Mama's bedside, caring for her when he won't - when she herself won't. You're the only one that cares.

 _Caring is a mistake. Caring makes you_ weak _._

It's a vicious world, reality; you've stared leviathans down their throats and caught a star in your hands, and people scare you far more than those ever did. You're the best because that's the _only_ thing that keeps everyone else from tearing you apart.

They will not consume you. He will not consume you. You live only for yourself, not for him, not for Kaji, not for Mama or Papa or that shrew...only for yourself.

_There it is._

You breathe in and it fills your lungs like mustard gas. You're born again.

You step outside a rejuvenated woman.

"What were you doing?" you imagine Misato saying to you. As it is, her eyes stay fixed on the newspaper.

You chuckle. "Finding my center."


End file.
